Wait, is THAT how that works?!

[Mouseferatu]

I know a lot of us got into D&D--whatever edition--when we were pretty young. And I know that many of us, as kids, pretty foolishly misunderstood some fundamental aspect of the game.

I cut my teeth on the Red Box, which only had Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic as alignments. So when I switched over to Advanced D&D, with its nine alignments, I somehow got it into my head that they were all a single continuum from "most good" (Lawful Good) to "most evil" (Chaotic Evil).

So, for instance, Lawful Evil was still pretty good, and "more good" than Neutral Good. I was seriously confused upon reading Tiamat's entry in the Monster Manual.

I'm curious what other people's goofy rules/concepts misunderstandings were.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh, here's another that I've mentioned before. I had no idea how numbered maps worked. So when I tried to run a one-on-one game with a friend, using Keep on the Borderlands, I just gave him the map as a flavorful handout and had him encounter every area in the module in numerical order. Then I couldn't figure out why we both got bored with it.

(Also I couldn't fathom why "glaive" was listed under pole-arms, but I think every young gamer who was a Krull fan experienced that one. )

 

[Jester David]

I cut my teeth with the video games first. Like Eyes of the Beholder. I was always confused how the wizard had the best Armour Class. Even after I took off the fighter's armour, it wasn't as good.
My brain refused to accept negative AC as better.

 

[ccs]

We (myself/brother/cousin/+ friend) started with the Basic boxed set over Xmas vacation of 1980.
Our only real stumbling block was that we spent the 1st several months looking for someplace that sold "the board". We found dice. And miniatures. And modules. And 1e hardbacks.... But no board.
Eventually we found a helpful hobby shop where the guy behind the counter explained that the map inside the module WAS the board. But that only the DM saw it. And that the DM described the rooms to the other players. If they wanted a "board?? Then one of them had to draw it.
"OH!" (so we were doing it mostly right.)
And with a simple pack of graph paper we were now on the right path.
Mom was so glad she didn't have to go looking through yet one more obscure store.

 

[Staffan]

I started playing with the Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner, which is descended from Runequest. When we first started playing, we figured that just like you'd roll 4D6 for your elf character's Intelligence, you'd roll 1D8+1 for their broadsword's damage upon buying it (rather than rolling it when you hit).

 

[Ancalagon]

I started playing with the Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner, which is descended from Runequest. When we first started playing, we figured that just like you'd roll 4D6 for your elf character's Intelligence, you'd roll 1D8+1 for their broadsword's damage upon buying it (rather than rolling it when you hit).

That's awesome

"I think the vendor sold me a busted sword, it only does 2 points of damage!"

 

[fjw70]

When playing 1e, 1” of distance was 10 feet underground and 10 yards above ground. This was his weapon and spell ranges worked. However, I mistakenly thought it applied to spell areas too. We had really big fireballs.

 

[pogre]

Oh, here's another that I've mentioned before. I had no idea how numbered maps worked. So when I tried to run a one-on-one game with a friend, using Keep on the Borderlands, I just gave him the map as a flavorful handout and had him encounter every area in the module in numerical order. Then I couldn't figure out why we both got bored with it.

(Also I couldn't fathom why "glaive" was listed under pole-arms, but I think every young gamer who was a Krull fan experienced that one. )

Laid out the map for players too. We still had fun with it.

 

[Invisible Stalker]

I thought the white crayon was in the Red Box by mistake.

I never did use it to mark the dice.

 

[oreofox]

When we (me/sister/her hubby) first got into 3rd edition, we read the random height and weight tables completely wrong. Well, the weight part, anyway. I was making a dwarf, and rolled his height (something like 4'8" or so), and went to the weight. We see (x2d8 or 2d6, can't remember) with a base weight of something like 150. We didn't know the (x2d8) meant you multiply the number you rolled for height modifier by that 2d8. So, I rolled a 15, and multiplied 150 by 15, getting a dwarf that was 4'8" and weighed 2,250 pounds. We reread the whole thing and found out the right way to do that.